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About this Event

Who’s it for: Specially designed for social workers to give them the skills and training required to undertake age assessments. This training will be delivered by social work trained professionals who have undertaken hundreds of age assessments in their statutory roles and have successfully been through the judicial review process. The course will give you all of the tools that you need to undertake a robust age assessment which will have the best chance of standing up to any potential challenge while ensuring corporate and statutory responsibility is discharged effectively.

The course covers:

Why age is important

Legislation, guidance and caselaw governing this area of work

Practical guidance in preparing for the assessment and undertaking each part of the assessment

Tasks to encourage the development of your analytical skills

Information about the judicial review process

The Trainers.

Lisa Nelson

Lisa is a qualified social worker. When she moved from working in safeguarding to working in the specialist team responsible for all unaccompanied asylum seeking children in 2013 she quickly became passionate about this cohort of young people. Lisa, and her colleague Dave, completed all of the age assessments for the authority they worked for, easily amounting to over 150 assessments, they have been to judicial review where they were successful against challenge of their assessment. She would say that this was a fantastic learning opportunity, to observe the line of questioning taken by the judge in the case, and following this experience Lisa took a keen interest in reading relevant case law to see how other Local Authorities were practicing and what learning she could take from this.

​Lisa has been a team manager of a specialist UASC service for a period of 3 years, across two Local Authorities, a city and a county. She is currently team manager for a specialist social work team with responsibility for all unaccompanied asylum seeking children who are are in the care of the Local Authority or are Care Leavers.

Lisa has been delivering training to a range of audiences for the last 6 years covering all aspects of working with unaccompanied asylum seeking children and undertaking age assessments.

​While undertaking post qualifying studies Lisa developed an evidence based Trafficking Risk Assessment which is now used in practice by the two authorities that she has worked for.

David Atherton

Dave Atherton changed careers and qualified as a social worker in 2007 with a BA Hons in Social work from Staffordshire University, after many years as a professional musician. Since qualifying he spent four years in Staffordshire’s family assessment and support team before joining the Central Through Care Team specialising in uasc at its inception in 2011.

​Since then he has gained a lot of experience in undertaking age assessments and human rights assessments as well as being heavily involved in the development of this specialist team, working to improve the outcomes for all of Staffordshire's unaccompanied asylum seeking children.

​Now working as a senior practitioner he is also involved in delivering training to foster carers, educators, and other professionals as well as undertaking seminars and lectures to social work students.

What is the refund policy?

Once a place is secured you may amend your delegate name without charge. You may cancel your booking up to one calendar month without charge. Any cancellations made within two weeks of the training date will incur 50% charge. Any cancellations made within a week of the training date will be liable for full payment. If we cancel the event for any reason, we will refund 100% of the fee, but will not be held liable for any travel or accommodation costs incurred. We always endeavour to reschedule training as opposed to cancelling it.

Is my registration/ticket transferable?

In the event of you being unable to attend you may transfer your ticket to a colleague with prior permission from Mike Hand Training

Should you have any queries or require any further information please contact mike@mikehandtraining.com